iBeacon Comes to SXSW

AUSTIN, Texas — If you need any more proof that iBeacon is one of the hottest technology trends of 2014, look no further than this year's SXSW festival.

The official SXSW mobile app is powered by iBeacon — Apple's name for the innovative Bluetooth LE (aka Bluetooth Smart) technology that allows two-way communication to take place between devices. We've seen iBeacon implementations in retail environments and at stadiums, but this is one of the first times we've seen iBeacon technology utilized at an event like SXSW.

iOS users who download the official SXSW app can take advantage of iBeacon in select sessions and when picking up their badges. For instance, when the user is in the vicinity of the SXSW registration area, the user will get a notification containing their Registration QuickCode.

Additionally, more than 40 beacons are set up around the Austin Convention Center and in certain event venues. Jeff Sinclair, co-founder of Eventbase — the company that built the SXSW app — walked me through the iBeacon implementation at a panel about the Lego community.

At 12:30 p.m. — the time the session started — I was greeted with a notice on my phone welcoming me to the session and inviting me to join the discussion within the app itself.

The official SXSW mobile app is powered by iBeacon technology.

Eventbase has built a threaded discussion platform into its SXSW app that lets attendees have a conversation about a session within the app itself. Users can also find out which other attendees (who have logged into the SXSocial platform) are at a session and view tweets from a specific session's hashtag. Beacons can also be configured to send messages about a session to the user.

For SXSW, Eventbase is using Qualcomm's Gimbal platform for the sensors itself — in part, Sinclair said, because it offers additional layers of security over other beacon platforms.

Be Relevant, Not Annoying

It was important for both Eventbase and SXSW not to abuse the notification feature of beacon technology. "We don't want to spam users or overwhelm them with messages," Sinclair said. As a result, the broadest beacon implementations — which will occur during the keynotes in the Austin Convention Center — will work in a "passive only" mode, meaning users will simply be thanked for attending a session and not given any other specific prompts.

That said, Sinclair sees tremendous potential for beacons and events — especially at venues that may have low (or no) Internet connectivity. Using beacons, users can communicate one-to-one within an app, without needing a connection to the Internet.

The fact that beacons can recognize specific locations and geofenced areas is an advantage for event planners too. "GPS doesn't work well indoors," Sinclair said. "That makes it hard to target specific users in a specific location." With beacons, users can have access to different contextual information or get data about what is around them with much higher degrees of accuracy.

Just the Beginning

Sinclair and the Eventbase team are hoping to learn from the SXSW implementation to see how the company can modify and expand its use of beacons at future events. The company will also be using iBeacons in its official app for the Tribeca Film Festival in April and at Cannes Lions in June.

At Tribeca, Sinclair says beacons will be at locations around the festival, offering users a way to share what they think of a film or get more information about line times and screening capacity.

And Android support is coming too. Right now, neither Apple's iBeacon nor Qualcomm's Gimbal platforms support Android devices. Gimbal, however, is working on it and support is expected to be rolled out soon.

Sinclair notes, however, that it will be some time before Android matches iOS in terms of parity, at least on the beacon front. This is in part because Android itself didn't have solid Bluetooth Low Energy support until Android 4.3. And although Android devices are capable of recognizing beacons today, they only consume data. iOS devices, on the other hand, can also act as an iBeacon, allowing for two-way communication between devices and apps.

Still, Sinclair is bullish on the future of beacons — for events and beyond. I completely agree. In fact, just last week I discussed iBeacon and Bluetooth Low Energy in the context of what the tech means for brands at the ANA Brand Masters conference.

With any luck, future SXSW conferences (and parties!) will be beaconfied.

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